A Pin Goes Back in the U.S.S.R.

A small crowd gathered around a plaza bench Saturday in Rosa Khutor, the Sochi-area mountain town where Winter Olympics ski and snowboard events are being held. At the center of it a Russian woman rummaged through a bag of the kind of pins commonly traded by Olympic visitors, but she sounded an unfamiliar advertisement: “President! President!”

An American visitor approached for a closer look. Russian President Vladimir Putin was the architect of these Winter Olympics, and his grim face seems omnipresent here.

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